Theme: Commons

DEBATE VS PROSECUTION: THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE COMMONS OF LIBERTY.

(important)(If you read one article on liberty today, read this one)

The purpose of the DEBATE is to convince the audience – the audience is the judge. Ergo, debate is a political activity in which we seek to inform, persuade, and judge a question of commons.

Individuals argue, persuade, or discuss – engage in personal exchange, even if this exchange is only knowledge.

Prosecutors and Defendants attempt to defeat their opponents on grounds of harm – not the determination of a good – whether personal or common good.

While exchange may require consent, and while opinion on debate in the commons may or may not, prosecution does not. In fact, the purpose of prosecution is to pursue the truth regardless of the desires of the parties prosecuted.

The technique I have been developing is not one in which we assume (as does Hoppe) that parties have honest, ethical, moral, intentions, and that if we dislike anything whatsoever we can walk away from and let them do damage elsewhere – but that it is only after we prosecute their arguments in an attempt to see if they survive attempts at parasitism, that we can engage in exchange of ideas – and if not that we must not let them do damage elsewhere, and to demand restitution(recant) or punishment(shame) for their propositions.

This is the difference between the ‘libertarians’ who do not pay the cost of defending the commons, and those of us who desire the commons of a condition of liberty, and as such are willing to pay the high cost of constructing and maintaining the commons of liberty.

Now, I don’t generally engage in debate. I start from the first principle of cooperation: non-parasitism. I want to know how the other person is engaging in error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, or deceit. If they are not engaging in those things then their argument survives, and we can then conduct a negotiation, discourse, conversation. I start with the assumption that all men seek to justify their parasitisms, and that liberty is constructed only when we forcibly suppress all parasitism, leaving only productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary transfer, limited to productive(non-parasitic) externalities.

That this metaphysical value judgement – the difference between the attempt to escape responsibility for the commons while demanding its fruits, and the necessity of taking responsibility for the commons in order to enjoy the fruits of liberty – is where ‘libertarians’ err.

All that remains is to determine whether I am correct, and that this intuition of free riding on the commons, rather than constructing the commons, is produced by genetic consequence, normative consequence, or both.

At present, given only personal experience (because I have not yet found any data other than the pattern of argument in history, it certainly appears to be ‘both’.)

So while I do love, respect, and believe most ‘libertarians’ to be honest men, they are engaged in the argumentative support of a metaphysical value judgement like that of diasporic traders, migratory shepherds, and domestic slaves: free riding upon the commons while demanding liberty that can only be produced as a commons where words – like deeds, like property – are all not just respected, but vigorously DEFENDED.

In other words, people insufficiently domesticated that while they may engage in exchange, and may engage in animal husbandry, or engaging in hunting and gathering, they still are not engaging in production, and in fact are engaged in the same parasitism against the commons that their ancestors engaged upon the land as hunter gatherers, and as pastoralists, and as slaves, as gypsies, as roving merchants, and finally as credit money financial capitalists. All of these people may engage in trade, but they maintain parasitism upon the territorial and normative, and often, genetic commons.

Therefore,

Every man a Craftsman,

Every man a Warrior,

Every man a Juror.

Every man a Sheriff,

Every man a Prosecutor,

Every man a Judge.

Every man a Sovereign.

That is the only construction under which a condition of liberty is possible.

There are no free rides. You cannot walk away from error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, and deceit, any more than you can walk away from corruption, fraud, theft, violence, and murder.

Liberty is built by the actions of men who deny others **all** alternatives. Prosecution, Like Property, Like Truth, is a high tax to pay for liberty. But it is the only means by which liberty can be brought into existence: actions that cost us.

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev, Ukraine